New technologies, and a little help from the U.S. Supreme Court , have made it possible for large numbers of women to find out whether they carry genetic mutations that increase their risk of breast cancer — a development warmly welcomed by experts in the field.

Healthcare should consider social media as a way to better inform patients of procedure and treatment risks, and to streamline efficiencies across doctor-patient communications.

Although surgeons already are using the technology to communicate with one another, driving equity of care in the process, we’re only just beginning to glimpse social media’s potential as a meaningful communications channel linking patient and physician.

NASDAQ Apple vs. Google: Which Tech Giant Will Conquer Healthcare? NASDAQ By comparison, Google has taken an industry-straddling approach to healthcare, expanding into biotech, medical devices, and mobile health at the same time.

In his third post in our BRIC series, Maneesh Juneja examines the state of Digital Health in India, the world’s largest democracy. I recently came across a product in India which claims to be India’s first fully automated healthcare kiosk. I haven’t seen it myself, but the kiosk allows BMI, blood pressure and haemoglobin to be monitored at any time of the day. It’s also possible to order prescription medicines through the kiosk.

Given the increasingly constrained resources available to the UK’s NHS, I wonder if “reverse innovation” is something that will become more common in years to come. Could a healthcare kiosk developed in India for low resource settings be adapted and used by the UK?

Narendra Modi has also outlined plans for a Digital India, a connected knowledge economy which would offer world class facilities at the click of a mouse. Not just in health, but in education & banking services too.

For health, the vision is that a patient in the health centre of a village could be connected to a healthcare professional hundreds of miles away and be diagnosed online. Is that technology going to be developed by home grown companies or are there opportunities for non-Indian firms to contribute to making this vision a reality?

The Fred Alger Management team reached out to me recently asking what innovative changes I thought the medical and healthcare industry will be going through over the next 50 years. As Yogi Berra famously quipped “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” but I thought I’d give it a shot.